ere it ended--lest it spread
to--others. Do you understand?"

"No," he said doggedly.

She drew a steady breath. "Then I'll tell you more if I must. I ruined
my life for ever two years ago!... I must have been quite out of my
senses--they had told me that morning, very tenderly and pitifully--what
you already know. I--it was--unbearable. The world crashed down around
me--horror, agonized false pride, sheer terror for the future--"

She choked slightly, but went on:

"I was only eighteen. I wanted to die. I meant to leave my home at any
rate. Oh, I know my reasoning was madness, the thought of their
charity--the very word itself as my mind formed it--drove me almost
insane. I might have known it was love, not charity, that held me so
safely in their hearts. But when a blow falls and reason goes--how can
a girl reason?"

She looked down at her bridle hand.

"There was a man," she said in a low voice; "he was only a boy then."

Hamil's face hardened.

"Until he asked me I never supposed any man could ever want to marry me.
I took it for granted.... He was Gray's friend; I had always known
him.... He had been silly sometimes. He asked me to marry him. Then he
asked me again.

"I was a debutante that winter, and we were rehearsing some theatricals
for charity which I had to go through with.... And he asked me to marry
him. I told him what I was and he still wished it."

Hamil bent nearer from his saddle, face tense and colourless.

"I don't know exactly what I thought; I had a dim notion of escaping
from the disgrace of being nameless. It was the mad clutch of the
engulfed at anything.... Not with any definite view--partly from fright,
partly I think for the sake of those who had been kind to a--a
foundling; some senseless idea that it was my duty to relieve them of a
squalid burden--" She shook her head vaguely: "I don't know exactly--I
don't know."

"You married him."

"Yes--I believe so."

"Don't you _know_?"

"Oh, yes," she said wearily, "I know what I did. It was that."

And after he had waited for her in silence for fully a minute she said
in a low voice:

"I was very lonely, very, very tired; he urged me; I had been crying. I
have seldom cried since. It is curious, isn't it? I can feel the tears
in my eyes at night sometimes. But they never fall."

She passed her gloved hand slowly across her forehead and eyes.

"I--married him. At first I did not know what to do; did not realise,
understand.